From the Archives–Samurai: The Last Warrior

I’m currently embroiled in proofreading the endnotes for The Dragon From Chicago.  It’s a headache-inducing job, but it is the one part of the book in which no one can catch the errors except the writer.  (Probably the person who made one of them. )  Instead of hoping I pick up speed and can squeeze…

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Female Samurai: Warriors and Otherwise

Female samurais are stock figures in modern anime, manga, western comic books, and fantasy novels:  hard-fighting, often hard-drinking, badasses with swords and bows.  The key word is fantasy. In medieval Japan, samurai was a class distinction as well as a job description.  Women who were born into the samurai class were samurais whether or not…

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Samurai: The Last Warrior

John Man combines travelogue, history and social commentary n Samurai: The Last Warrior, using the story of Saigo Takamori, popularly known as the “last samurai”, as his central focus. In 1877, Saigo led a hopeless rebellion against the Japanese government. Six hundred samurai armed with traditional sword and bow fought the government’s newly trained modern…

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